FOR SOME PEOPLE, a prison sentence is a tragedy. For Mae West, it was a career opportunity. Tried for obscenity in 1927 following the production of her play, Sex —largely on the basis of its title —West refused to accept a fine and insisted on serving a ten-day prison sentence. The 33-year-old playwright and vaudeville star thought she might find inspiration on the inside. “I was always fascinated by prisons and mental institutions,” she told biographer Charlotte Chandler years later. “I wasn’t going to be deprived of that experience. I saw those as ten very valuable days, a kind of working vacation.”
On 20 April, she was loaded into a ‘Black Maria’ prison van and taken to Welfare (now Roosevelt) Island to serve her sentence. Ordered to strip, West quipped, “I thought this was a respectable place!”, and claimed that the guards kept her naked for longer than was strictly necessary in order to get a look at her famed curves. As she dressed again, she insisted on keeping her own silk undies. She was allergic to prison undergarments, she claimed, and couldn’t possibly subject her delicate skin to such coarse clothing. The warden and guards, awed by her celebrity, acquiesced. People usually ended up giving West what she wanted.